


what is tragedy until it is ours

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: What We Are (FMA Angst Week 2018) [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Child Death, F/M, FMA Angst Week 2018, Grief/Mourning, Insomnia, Post-Promised Day, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: For FMA angst week 2018. Day 5: BrokenThe words all seem so pointless now.





	what is tragedy until it is ours

**Author's Note:**

> **Broken**  
>  (adjective)  
> \--having been fractured or damaged and no longer in one piece or in working order.  
> \--(of a person) having given up all hope; despairing.

The news was delivered hours ago, but it still hangs in the air. Mei is asleep right now, tracks of tears still wet on her face and her body burrowed in the sheets. Al had laid with her for a while, but as the hours passed and exhausted sleep did not come, he found his muscles too stiff and the urge to move too immense. Careful so as not to wake of her, he extricates himself from her side and finds himself lingering outside the balcony before he can even register the action of walking.

It’s late. Night has collapsed upon the world as though day has simply exhausted itself with the struggle of bringing light and has surrendered with a despairing groan. The weight of the darkness presses heavy on the sky, trying to crush everything beneath it. With the glass doors closed, he can't feel the air, but he also can't bring himself to imagine it as anything but frigid and dead. Opening the doors would ruin that illusion. There are no visible stars tonight, just a thick slate of formless dark and glowing milky curve of the moon where the clouds have chosen to part around it. For some reason, Al feels it to be the mocking smile of Truth, reminding him that there is always a price, always some tragedy that is meant to counterbalance an influx of joy and simplistic contentment.

 _Equivalent Exchange._ Al closes his eyes, feeling far too tired and older than his twenty-nine years. _Human kind cannot gain anything without giving up something of equal value._

He and Ed worked for half a decade to disprove that, through. Equivalent Exchange doesn’t work, doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion, an order superimposed upon a world that has survived longer than humans and their science, and will survive long after they are gone. Life is too messy, too chaotic, to be equivalent in any way, shape, or form. Sometimes tragedy hits, simply and without any explanation. Sometimes things break and they can’t be fixed. The flow of the world, of life and death, is a merciless current that batters you against the rocky shore without explanation, rhyme, or reason. You simply must endure it and hold your head high so you don’t drown.

“Ba?”

He turns. Five years old, Jinhua peers at him from around the corner, the oversized nightgown all but swallowing her whole. He doesn’t see Xiaomei anywhere—the miniature panda must still be curled up on her pillow, sound asleep and all but dead to the world.

“You should be in bed, Jin-Jin,” he says in soft Xingese.

Unperturbed, she strolls over to him, barely managing not to trip over her nightgown. When she is at his feet, she blinks up at him with eyes that are just like his. Almost everything else she gets from her mother, but those eyes are his, the same soft, slightly-greenish gold. “Where’s Ma?”

“Sleeping.” He bends down to pick her up. She’s so big—it’s hard to believe that her head used to be the size of his hand, and now it rests like an iron weight on his shoulder.

At that, an oddly contemplative expression overtakes her face. She follows his gaze, peering out into the vast expanse of the cloudy night. “What about the baby?”

His breath catches.

Perhaps his grip on her subtly tightens, or some other component of distress manifests from him, because Jinhua raises her head to peer at him. He wonders if his eyes looked so knowing and clairvoyant when he was her age, if he looked at people like he could see beneath their skin. “Ba? What’s wrong?”

“There’s no baby.” He runs his fingers through her hair, soft and silken. She has her mother’s hair. She has her mother’s everything.

“But you said—”

“I know what I said.” _New addition to the family. Younger sibling. You’ll love having someone to grow up with._ The words all seem so pointless now. The death of them tastes like ash in his mouth.

She probably heard Mei’s screaming through the labor pains, perchance saw the doctor leave with an unmoving white bundle in his arms. He wonders if she happened to spy her mother as she wept over something that would never be, as he held her because he didn’t know what else to do, how else to react.

The darkness seems to strain against the windowpane. Al thinks he finally understands—truly, absolutely, _unequivocally_ understands, in more than just a similar-but-not-quite-similar sense of grief—why Teacher did what she did.

“Sorry,” he says softly. He’s not quite sure who he’s talking to.

* * *

Sleep does not visit him, even after he tucks Jinhua back into bed and kisses her goodnight and bids her to do what he can’t. When dawn crests the horizon, Al is bone-weary as he ambles back to his and Mei’s shared room.

He sits down on the mattress, feeling it shift beneath his weight. Here he is, staring at the walls late into the night, unable to sleep. No different than fifteen years ago. This time, though, it’s not for Ed he’s playing the sleepless sentinel, and his body is still flesh and blood that requires rest in order to function.

It doesn’t _feel_ very different, though. His mind swims and aches with a sort intrinsic exhaustion. And there’s still that sense of loss there, that lingering _wrongness_ that reminds him of the tragedy that has and always will stalk his heels. It’s a different flavor, granted, but damn if it doesn’t hurt.

“Alphonse?”

Turning, he sees Mei peering up at him with bleary dark eyes. The exhaustion of a difficult birth is still wrought in her body, the sheets tangled around her hips and the maternity dress now far too loose on her. He can still smell the lingering specter of blood and amniotic fluid. He can’t remember if he ever changed the sheets or not. Surely he did, or the doctor did, or one of the royal servants. Somebody.

“Morning.” The word comes out weak, flat. Sunrises in Xing used to fascinate him. Now it just feels tired and empty and pointlessly cyclical.

Her eyes grow half-lidded and dull. She looks from him to the window, where the first light of day is filtering in through the curtains. It’s winter, so the light is halfhearted and wan, painfully unable to knife its way through the thick drapes.

“Mei?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her voice trembles with the beginnings of a sob.

His chest aches like an old wound being torn open. Swinging his legs onto the mattress, he lays his body next to hers, feeling the sublte creak beneath his weight. The softness of the pillow is so, so tempting, and a wave of drowsiness sweeps over him. Mei quickly averts his gaze and turns away from him, the fabric of the gown drooping as it drips down her shoulders. He can’t help but notice how pronounced her spine looks, straining against her skin. Her hair cascades glossily across the sheets in an atramentous spill.

“Don’t apologize.”

He touches her shoulder and coaxes her to turn over, to look at him. Her fists have curled around the blankets as though holding on for dear life, so when she turns, the blankets tangle further. A pale, waxy quality has taken residence in her face, while her bottom lip trembles and her eyes mist with a fresh wellspring of tears.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

“I—”

“It’s _not_.” He cups the back of her neck and pulls her close. She doesn’t shy away at all, but rather buries her face into his shoulder, and he can feel her breath starting to hiccup. “Don’t you _dare_ think that. It’s not your fault. Sometimes this just—happens.”

Her hands release the blankets and rise to grip the fabric of his shirt, tightly and urgently. “It still _hurts_.”

“Yeah.” His eyes start to sting. He runs his hand through her hair. It’s silkily soft, just like Jinhua’s, and the son that didn’t survive probably would have had the same hair. He’ll never know, now. “Yeah, it does.”

He hadn’t been able to do anything, not when there was blood and pain and Mei was screaming for help. He couldn’t do anything but watch and wait and hold her hand. It was like watching Father stalk over to Ed all those years ago, trapped in a crumbling metal shell that would kill him if he moved too much. But he couldn’t do anything to ease her suffering, couldn’t trade anything. This time he could only watch.

“Where’s Jinhua?” Mei asks suddenly. She peers up at him, the ink in her eyes having spilled over into fresh, crystal-clear tears. “Where is my daughter?”

“Asleep.” And probably too young to understand what has taken place, so her ignorance is her own bliss. She’ll probably figure it out when she’s older and weep in her own right, but right now she can rest without pain. “Want me to get her?”

“Please,” she says, nodding. She sniffs. “We still have her, right?”

His throat suddenly closes up, and all he can do is nod. Yes. Yes, they still have one child who is happy and healthy and alive. And maybe—maybe they can mend, just given a little time.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a headcannon that Al and Mei end up having only have one child for this very reason. Fun fact, Jinhua means "golden flower".


End file.
